Proper Kung Fu Salute ..

[nanfeishen]

The salute will probabily vary from school to school, but generally right fist, with left open hand. Sometimes the left hand is sitting on the right fist, sometimes there is a space between the two or sometimes the left hand covers the fist or curls over the fist. Some schools will have the junior students "hide" the fist behind the open left hand, when greeting senior students, to symbolise humility and non aggression, while the seniors will greet the juniors with the fist facing the junior, to symbolise their seniority.One elderly chinese master once told a group of us that curling the left hand over the fist and placing the thumbs protruding upwards touching each other, that it was a sign of a challenge to the greeted party.If in doubt, simply place the open hands together in the universal eastern greeting, and you should get by without an issue

[Infrazael]

In CLF, we use open left palm, closed right fist. They touch, but the left palm is not wrapped around the right fist.

 

In Hung Gar they do it very similarly, except the fist and palm are like a foot away from each other, not touching.

[dtstiachi]

the Shaolin class that meets before my Tai Chi class at the dojo uses a palm together in front of the body posture (almost looks like praying) as they bow. they Headmaster uses the traditional open hand over close fist salute back to them. He also told us that it is school specific.

[InsaneTigerCrane]

left hand open to right fist is how i do it. it's been done that way since the chin dynasty.

i believe it was a symbol ( salute ) created to show or promote the return of the ming( the dynasty were shaolin kung fu was at it's highest) and also to show that you yourself were virtuous.

[fallen_milkman]

It would actually sound more like "mung" I think, based on my Mandarin studies.

Also, our bow seems similar but more...distinct?

We start out at "attention". Hand at our sides, feet together. We bring left hand up open and right hand clenched, and bring them together almost like holding a knife in a reversed grip and stabbing your own palm. Then we twist our hands so that the part of the hand that "stabbed" the palm is facing the direction you are bowing, and the open hand folds over your knuckles. The forearms should form the top of a triangle. Simultaneously, we go into a right cat stance.

...Or maybe it's the same bow, and I went into more detail?

[ninjanurse]

The right hand is the sun, the left the moon. It's a yin-yang kind of thing I believe.

[ZepedaWingChun]

Presented is an excerpt about the salutation in Wing Chun History from a link at the Ving Tsun Museum:

Upon meeting, the revolutionaries identified themselves to each other with a secret hand-signal that would come to be the formal greeting or courtesy of Wing Chun. In fact, the traditional greeting or courtesy common to many of today's kung fu styles has two meanings. The first meaning recognizes the style's Shaolin origins - the left hand symbolizing the union of the Green Dragon (the left hand) and the White Tiger (the right hand), the fighting animals of the Shaolin monks.

In the Hung Fa Yi (Red Flower Righteous) Lineage of Wing Chun, however, the hands are reversed: the left hand forms a fist and the right hand is open palm. It still retains its significance to Shaolin but it also refers to the secret society. In this context, the fist represents Yat (the Sun) and the palm represents Yuet (the Moon). Combined, these two characters mean "Bright" which reads and sounds like "Ming." This is the name of the previous Dynasty - the one overthrown by the Manchurians who formed the "Ching" Dynasty in its place. Hence, during the time of rebellion, when a Wing Chun practitioner or secret society member saluted with a fist and open palm pushed toward you, they were saying "Return the Ming, overturn the Ching."

http://home.vtmuseum.org/articles/meng/truthrevealed.php

[Kajukenbopr]

open left covering right punch- thats how all kung fu I know schools do it